What Is The Purpose Of Yoga?

In recent times, yoga is mainly looked upon as a set of techniques useful for achieving fitness in daily life and prevention and cure of some specific diseases or disorders.

But the goal of yoga was different when yoga practices came into existence more than three thousand years ago. Throughout its history, yoga seems to have undergone changes regarding the purpose for which it was practised.Many different varieties of yoga came to be practised for different purposes.The main varieties of yoga include:

*Bhakti Yoga (yoga of devotion)

*Karma Yoga (yoga of duty or action)

*Jnyana Yoga (yoga of bodily performances).

The final goal or general purpose of all the above varieties of yoga was the same.This goal was liberation from the cycle of rebirths,called mukti or kaivalya.However,the methods and contents of each variety was different from the others.